For the first Christmas I spent at Marshall Space Flight Center, I gave Ares Project Managers Steve Cook and Dan Dumbacher each a small gift bag. Inside each bag was a can of alphabet soup, “as a way of returning the favor,” I told them. My boss let me get away with it because, while I was being a smartass, I was at least getting along with my customers.

But seriously: I spent the first six months filling up my head with acronyms, filling up one handwritten journal per month as I tried to understand the hieroglyphics and codes that engineers used while designing and building large space systems.

If you want to be a technical writer, you have to do this as a simple survival mechanism. It’s how you learn the language your subject matter experts are speaking.

NASA’s been famous for generating long lists of acronyms, which serve the very useful purpose of avoiding having to say “polybutadiene acrylonitrile” (PBAN) or “space shuttle main engine” (SSME) every time they come up in conversation. Surprisingly, though, I didn’t learn the acronym-collection process at NASA first, but at Walt Disney World, of all places. I collected acronyms for my own reference, and then, when coworkers saw what I was doing, they wanted a copy. A lot of my personal acronym lists became shared documents because they’re necessary, not just for individual documents but everyday use.

The acronym list I maintained for the Ares Projects was 48 pages long. I’ve heard that the list for the Space Launch System (SLS) has exceeded that. Regardless of the project, whether it be aerospace, information technology, biotechnology, energy, or any other technical field, the discipline you’re supporting will have its own specialized language and mental shorthand. The better you learn that language, the better–not just how things are spelled, but how they’re pronounced (for example, a Design Specification for Natural Environments or DSNE, is pronounced “Disney”). The acronyms of technology are only proliferating, so the better you prepare yourself, the more likely you’ll be able to understand and respond when someone asks you to “edit the Disney” one day.

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Bonus Feature: Some aerospace acronyms just for you. It’s not intended to be comprehensive, just to give you some clue as to how these Acronym Lists work.

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